Posts Tagged "Film"

Woody Allen sacks the President’s Wife

In case you hadn’t heard, Nicolas Sarkozy’s wife, Carla Bruni was due to make a cameo appearance in Woody Allen’s upcoming film “Midnight in Paris” starring Owen Wilson.

Her role was to walk out of a bakery with a baguette.

It sounds so simple, but it seems that acting requires skills that singers and supermodels don’t have. (Who would have thought?)

The scene took 35 takes because Mrs Sarkozy kept looking at the camera and other techniques to try and beef-up her role in the film.

Reports now say that Allen has decided to cut the scene and use another actress!

Mayor decides to censor his own council

Everyone’s favourite mad-cap Mayor (of the people who read this blog) Christian Estrosi has made a final coup against freedom and democracy: he has banned the recording of council meetings, after censoring street performers it was the next logical step to censor his councillors.

The Mayor of Nice decided without warning that the recordings would be cut, claiming that it was necessary to make economies.

He said that the practice costs the local government 25,000 euros per year. He runs the Conseil Municipal (the town of Nice) which serves about 450,000 citizens.

Here’s a video for francophones:

Compare this to the Conseil Régional, that serves the entire region of Provence, the Alpes and the Cote d’Azur (including  Nice), that’s about 4,781,000 people, with a much bigger number of councillors and hence a bigger room and presumably more cameras. To broadcast a meeting, it costs the region 2,000 euros.

The Region meets 5 times a year, so broadcasting costs 10,000 euros per year. Estrosi holds 4 meetings per year, the legal minimum. To reach his figure, over double the cost despite fewer meetings, his cameras must be made out of gold. Note that 4 times a year is the legal minimum for the Conseil Municipal to meet.

Also note that the propaganda “magazine” that gets distributed to everybody’s letterbox, as well as “letters from the mayor” costs the town 450,000 a year.

Having dispelled the money myth, the real reason he was to censor the broadcast is because it is the only source of unbiased, unfiltered news left. The Mayor’s office buys “advertising space” in the local paper, to the extent it provides a third of the newspaper’s total revenue.

Estrosi is simply trying to hide the truth, and by preventing the  recording of the council meetings he does a disservice to democracy and his electors.

Tea for the Tillerman: How to be an Extra

Being an extra is a very peculiar experience. In fact, I can say with primary evidence that the whole business of “being an extra” is not wholly dissimilar to what you might see on the Ricky Gervais series. (That is, the first series, before his character became famous and stopped being an extra.)

Essentially, the real feeling that comes being an extra is one of very strong self-conflict. With one hand, the ego is stroked; an extra feels incredibly important and special, since there is a good chance of being on television for a short period of time, something that everybody secretly (or overtly) wants to do at least once. However, with the other hand, it is knocked for six; since an extra is the lowest rank on the set, less important than the straightness of an actor’s bow tie.

In addition to this, it is important to note that there are indeed professional extras, while those of us in the theatre society are students. These people, as Stephen Fry wrote years ago, are supposed to be called a “featured artist” or “background artist.” Nevertheless, while on set, it was self-deprecatingly amusing to be told by the director, “Don’t call yourself an extra. The real extras will get upset.”

The whole experience is quite an identity crisis. When faced with an extras job, the usual practice is to do as you are told to an extent, but the rest of the time is spent trying to be noticed on camera. If lucky, the director will not see your extremely melodramatic face-palm or hear your exalted gasp. Of course, some people (including me) try to be in shot more than the other extras (all right, particularly me). This type of person is well represented by Gervais’ character. By contrast, the ultimate goal for an extra is to be the smug git who will come up to you, a poor extra forced into the background, with the news “I’ve got a line!” The second objective is to be in a position to schmooze the actors between takes.

The key to being an extra is to remember just one thing; as an extra, you are technically furniture, but useless, as the actors cannot sit on you. On set, it may be a shock to learn that the most important and glorious position of all is actually the man who brings the tea and biscuits.

Originally published in Impact on 14/01/08